Public works getting help from private money

If you visit the newly renovated Griffith Park Observatory in the coming months, you’ll have to pay $8 per adult or $4 per child to ride a bus from Hollywood.

If you want your sidewalk repaired by the city of Los Angeles, the waiting list is 83 years -- unless you’re willing to foot half the bill.

And if you’d like to see your street repaved, that wait, too, is running into the decades.

Why?

The city hasn’t sufficient money, officials say.

And that’s where we begin today’s civics lesson....

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If the city’s budget was $6.7 billion for this year, then why was it so difficult to drum up $93 million for something like the observatory makeover?

Lots of reasons, including Proposition 13, say those who keep track of the city piggy bank.

Let’s start by looking at where the money came from for the observatory renovation:

* Private donations: $25.7 million.

* City and county bond measures: $28.5 million.

* City of Los Angeles funds: $26.4 million.

* State and federal government: $12.4 million.

The interesting thing about the renovation is that it had been talked about in one form or the other since the 1970s. In 1993, officials began raising money for the project -- something that took nine years to complete.

“We just don’t have revenues that escalate at the inflation rate,� said Deputy Mayor Karen Sisson, who is Antonio Villaraigosa’s budget bulldog. “The problem is that our revenues don’t have automatic escalators, but the things that we pay for -- whether it’s employees, material and supplies or professional services -- keep going up.

“So, even though the budget is getting bigger each year, it takes more dollars to pay for the core services being provided, much less expand them.�

Sisson and City Administrative Officer Bill Fujioka both point to Prop. 13 as a turning point for municipalities. The 1978 initiative largely capped property taxes in the state, dramatically reducing the flow of money to city coffers.

Fujioka, for one, said he still wonders if a more sensible solution would have been to apply Proposition 13 to residential properties but not some commercial properties.

Of course, there are many in the city who believe that government wastes the resources it has.

One interesting statistic: According to a study done by officials in Washington, D.C., last year that looked at the tax burden in the most populous city in each state, Los Angeles had the 16th highest overall. Its property taxes were fourth highest.

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Are there lessons from the observatory project?

Many of those involved say the trend of private donations to city institutions will only keep growing.

“These are very expensive projects to do with excellence in mind, and what the private part of the partnership delivers is the excellence factor,� said Camille Lombardo, executive director of Friends of the Observatory. “We would have renovated and expanded the observatory without the money that we raised, but one can only speculate on the kinds of exhibits we would have had.�

A lot of heavy hitters around town chipped in -- starting with $4 million from the Ahmanson Foundation that got the ball rolling. Another anonymous donor gave $5 million.

Those kinds of “public-private partnerships� are not exactly new. The zoo and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art -- to name just two -- have private fundraising arms.

But it will be interesting to see what role the private sector plays in projects such as the new state park at the Cornfield downtown or Los Angeles River restoration.

Something to chew on: When the city of Chicago opened Millennium Park on the site of an old downtown rail yard in 2004, $205 million of the $475 million cost came from the private sector.

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Any news on the Council District 7 election front?

Great news: All the candidates are actually living in the district in the northeast San Fernando Valley!

That means that a certain Times reporter probably won’t have to write any stories about carpetbagging between now and March. Whew.

The race, although not yet officially declared by the council, is to replace Alex Padilla, who is expected to win a state Senate seat Tuesday over little-known and underfunded Libertarian candidate Pamela Brown.

Assemblywoman Cindy Montanez, who was living in her hometown of San Fernando, moved into a house she purchased in Sylmar in late August, said Steve Veres, one of her deputies. She announced her candidacy for the council in June while conceding her Senate primary race to Padilla, saving everyone involved an extra news conference.

And who is one of Montanez’s new neighbors? Likely candidate Felipe Fuentes, Padilla’s chief of staff, who like Montanez was raised in the northeast Valley but lived in North Hills -- in Council District 12 -- between 2003 and late 2005 when he moved back to Sylmar as Padilla’s Senate campaign got underway.

The other candidate is Monica Rodriguez, a former community deputy for Mayor Richard Riordan and who has lived in Mission Hills in the 7th District the last seven years, she said. She grew up in Arleta.

While making my midafternoon candy run recently, I ran into Rodriguez outside City Hall, where she was trying to secure an endorsement from Councilman Jack Weiss.

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Wait. Is Fuentes running for his soon-to-be former boss’ seat?

Attentive readers may recall him telling this column several months ago that he was “seriously considering� it.

He reiterated that Friday, but wouldn’t commit.

“I truly believe that I’m uniquely positioned to transition the leadership in the 7th District from Alex to me,� Fuentes said.

Fuentes got himself elected to the county Democratic Central Committee recently. Why?

Take a look at the piece of mail Padilla sent out as part of his Senate campaign. Think Fuentes is running for City Council?

And, yes, we checked with the state Fair Political Practices Commission, and the mailer is legal since it advances Padilla’s candidacy.

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And what about Fuentes’ big “I’m running� speech?

It hasn’t come yet. But it will be tough to top Montanez, who announced her candidacy during her concession speech to Padilla last summer.

Since a certain Times reporter is going to have to listen to all three of them yammer for the next four months, all of the candidates may want to sharpen their oratory by reading the 100 top political speeches of all time, as assembled on www.americanrhetoric.com.

In fact, let’s make it a contest. The first candidate who can work a paragraph from Margaret Sanger’s “The Morality of Birth Control� -- No. 46 on the list -- into a stump speech will have a goldfish named after them.

Ready, set, go!

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